theguardian.com, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited and guardian.co.uk, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry, who died in February 2014, was appointed editor in 2011. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

As of May 2013, it was the most popular UK newspaper website with 8.2m unique visitors per month, just ahead of Mail Online with 7.6m unique monthly visitors.

The site is made up of a core news site, plus a network of niche websites covering subjects including media, environment and technology, sport, education and the public sector. theguardian.com is notable for its engagement with readers, including long-running talkboards and, more recently, a network of weblogs. Its seven blogs were joined on March 14, 2006, by a new comment site, Comment is free (see below), named after the famous quote by The Guardian editor, C. P. Scott. Articles (like the talkboards until their sudden closure on 25 February 2011) accept comments without pre-moderation, although posts on Comment is Free are moderated after the event. All now require registration for comments.

The site can be viewed for free and without registration, though some services such as leaving comments on articles require users to register. In March 2009, guardian.co.uk launched their API, using the OAuth protocol, and making a wide range of Guardian content available for use by web application developers.

theguardian.com is part of the Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, and new media including The Guardian daily newspaper, and The Observer Sunday newspaper. All the aforementioned are owned by the Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper''s editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to takeover by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.

History

guardian.co.uk was launched in 1999, born of the Guardian New Media Lab. Its popularity soared after the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, largely thanks to the diverse range of viewpoints published in the Guardian newspaper. The website won the Best Newspaper category in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards, beating the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Variety.

In 2006 guardian.co.uk reported its first profitable year, with income coming mostly from recruitment and display advertising. In May 2007, guardian.co.uk begun an 18-month programme of redesigning and adding features to the entire website, starting with the travel section, then moving through the rest of the site and the front page, finally updating the blogging and community features. On July 30, 2013, the website was moved from guardian.co.uk to theguardian.com as part of increasing investments to grow globally.

Subsites Guardian Sport

The Guardian′s sports section is a popular and well-respected web site, providing news, results, match reports and live commentaries from a host of different sports.

theguardian.com/sport has pioneered the online newspaper industry in the United Kingdom with its live coverage of sports, including live text commentaries of 115 Premier League football matches and every FIFAWorld Cup match. The site also provides some live coverage of the FA Cup, Champions League, Europa League and the occasional La Liga, League Cup and playoff games.

Guardian America Main article: Guardian America

"Guardian America" was an American version of the British news website Guardian Unlimited. The strategy, intended to win more US-based readers, was abandoned in October 2009. Guardianamerica.com now redirects to the website''s United States topic page.

Much of the content on Guardian America was taken from Guardian Unlimited and The Guardian, although some content was produced specifically for Guardian America.

Comment is free

Comment is free is a comment and political opinion site within theguardian.com. It contains the comment and opinion pieces from The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, plus contributions from more than 600 other writers. The site is edited by Natalie Hanman; its subsite devoted to religious affairs, Cif belief, is edited by Andrew Brown. It was launched on March 14, 2006, with Georgina Henry as launch editor. The original technical design and build was by Ben Hammersley, based on the Movable Type blogging platform. Latterly, Cif runs on a bespoke Guardian-made system, using Pluck for the commenting.

The site''s name is derived from a sentence in a famous essay written by veteran Guardian editor C. P. Scott: "Comment is free, but facts are sacred."

The site strictly enforces its talk policy by moderating comments after posting. For particularly sensitive topics, comments may be moderated before posting. Moderators may remove posts that violate the "Community Standards" (usually leaving a marker of the removal), but do not edit them.

Readership

theguardian.com is one of the UK leading online newspapers, becoming the first UK newspaper to attract more than 25 million unique users in a month (October 2008). On 7 July 2005, following the London bombings, 1.3 million unique users visited the site and a total of 7.8 million pages were viewed, at the time a record for guardian.co.uk.

As of August 2010 it was the second-most popular UK newspaper website after Mail Online, getting almost 34.6 million unique users monthly, and 13.7 million unique British users monthly. By May 2011 it reached 2.8m unique visitors per day, and 51.3m per month, behind the MailOnline''s 4.4m and 77.3m. As of May 2013, using National Readership Survey and comScore''s statistics, it was the most popular UK newspaper website with 8.2m unique visitors per month, ahead of Mail Online with 7.6m unique monthly visitors.

Awards

British Press Awards:

"Digital Innovation of the Year" (2008, 2009)

"Digital Journalist of the Year" (Sean Smith, 2008; Dave Hill, 2009)

The awards were created in 2008.

In addition, the 2011 award of "Political Journalist of the Year" to The Guardian''s Andrew Sparrow "was significant because it was a recognition of the impact of his general election live blog – a reward for innovation as well as reporting."

In 2009 it was nominated for (but did not win) a Webby Award for "Best Copy/Writing". However, the subsite Cif belief was nominated for, and won, the Webby in the best religion and spirituality site category.